Can Mother Nature please take a Valium and Father Sun , take a Viagra Pill.. !! We need to get some warmth in here. It was +5C on Monday and then last night it dipped to -18C and we got walloped by 18Cm of snow.. BTW.. blowing snow .. white out conditions. I am getting sick of mother nature !!

"Outside the sex sold legally in Nevada, prostitution in the United States transpires in the shadows of an underground economy. There are no accounting records to trace, no receipts to scrutinize, and no legal records to analyze. Simply, it is difficult to grasp the size of this economy. "
- Mary Carmen

$32K for a pimp ? There are 168 working hrs in a wk. and that makes it approx 190$ /per hr. Wonder how he pays the sex workers. Some of these values maybe over inflated. Even if the pimp had 3/4 sew workers in a week. That value ->32K seems over inflated.
- Peter Dawson

Completely fascinating. Here in NV, where it's legal, there are no officially traceable numbers on it, other than specific brother owner's tax filings. Prostitution has no NAICS code, it falls under "entertainment", like operating a movie theater. No breakout. Fascinating they can get hard numbers somehow on the UST and nothing on legal sex work
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Agreed. There are different types and level of prostitution. From what I have seen from sex worker's explanations in books, articles over the years. During work $190 per hour seems a reasonable figure, but you can't assume 100% working time. Maybe 50%?
- Eric - Final Countdown

definitely. also, i get the feeling the Malaysian gov't are doing serious ass-covering. from my observations as the husband of a Malaysian national, this is nothing new for that country.
- Big Joe Silenced

MC, did you just read something specific that inspired this? I admit, I am not keeping up with everything on this front.
- RudĩϐЯaЯïan

Previewing what it looks like in my blog is part of the inspiration process. Without that instant visual gratification, I lose interest quickly. Shallow, I know.
- Jandy

I'm the exact same way, Jandy. I wasted HOURS in Scrivener getting it to look exactly like it would on the printed page, down to adjusting page numbers and all.
- Akiva

just create a wiki and plug away.. its the easy to core dump and then you can add the content to blog later on !
- Peter Dawson

I write some of my longer blog posts in Word's "blog post mode," which looks quite a bit like a blog and posts directly to Wordpress (and some other software) blogs. (Don't get me started on wikis as places for fluid writing experiences...been there, done that half-time for three years, ==hated it== (to use a bit of wikimarkup, if I remember it correctly).)
- walt crawford

Actually, "blog post mode" is just clicking on New, then Blog Post, at least in Word2010.
- walt crawford

Windows Live Writer has nothing but "blog post mode". And once you set it up, it feels almost like typing directly on your blog. I prefer it over using the built in Wordpress or Blogger editor. Just have to make sure you post as draft if you plan on adding any specialized stuff that WLW doesn't support, such as featured images.
- April Russo (FForever!)

I mean, I guess a 777 is still a tiny miniscule speck compared to the whole South China Sea and the entirety of Southeast Asia. If the transponder on the black box malfunctioned for whatever reason, they'll probably never find it.

It's making money for somebody. Well, more than one somebodies. I figure it is like spam - most people won't necessarily respond, but you don't need a high return to still make some cash if your starting costs are low.
- Jennifer Dittrich

Man, I really did not like that movie. It was half narration and then moved from one long speech to the next. Though I agree, good action and I thought the style of the movie did not age, it was still powerful. But to make it work there needs to be a good story too.
- Todd Hoff

@Todd, ya at times there was too much chatter and no action..
- Peter Dawson

Plan to see it this weekend. On a similar note, Pompeii seemed to be a Spartacus: Blood and Sand re-hash (and even featured a soundtrack from that). And on a completely different genre, The Grand Budapest Hotel is hilarious! :-)
- Nils Sandin

Dr came to see Josiah about his neck stiffness/pain and has recommended we take him to the ER, as he now also has swelling along his jawline, and can't open his mouth wide enough to talk or chew properly :o/

Oh, we have some action! He's been seen by a Dr and will now be seen by a paeds specialist.
- Melly

The paed is needed because they can't get him to open his mouth wide enough to get a good look at his throat or take a swab. I have a feeling this is not going to be pleasant for anyone involved :o(
- Melly

I used to with movies. I usually do with games. I sat through the GTA V credits but I wasn't fully paying attention. It lasted 40 minutes.
- Rodfather

Some baseball game I worked on had video of the dev team and QA team playing through most of the credits... Otherwise, I'm not sure I've even sat through credits of games I've worked on.
- Andrew C (✔)

It doesn't seem like much to sit through the credits for a game when I spent 10-40 hours on it.
- Rodfather

I was bummed out when I finished Persona 4 Golden. I didn't want the game to end even though I probably spent 90+ hours on it.
- Rodfather

Yeah, but a game is interactive, and then the credits aren't. ... Usually. Come to think of it, I think Super Monkey Ball 1 had interactive credits. Maybe. Anyways, I'll sit through those.
- Andrew C (✔)

It's a good thing there's credits after each episode in a TV series. If it were bundled up all at the end it would take forever.
- Rodfather

Nearly always with movies at the theatre. I'm always hopeful there's just one more scene. Also at home too. Just watched Thor:Dark World last night (at home) and sat thru all the credits and good thing I did cos there's the usual clue as to what the next movie is gonna be, I was expecting that. But there was one more scene at the very end! And it was worth waiting for.
- Lnorigb
from FFHound!

I used to never sit through movie credits until I met a friend who always did. Nowadays I'll sit for as long as my kid can stand it for. =p Games I'll let the credits roll but might not pay attention to all of it. Movies at home I never sit through.
- rønin

"Imagine growing your own food on your own land, but also enough food to feed your entire neighborhood. Growing Power does just that. They’re able to grow 1 Million pounds of food, year round. Yes! You read that right. They’re in Milwaukee, WI where it’s cold enough outside in the winter to freeze boiling water in mid-air, and they grow food year round in climate controlled greenhouses."
- Todd Hoff
from Bookmarklet

I'm going to try them at the bead show this weekend and see what the reception is ($8 ea). Zulema, I invision the mushrooms being cut shorter and tucked into the moss of a terrarium - cute, right?
- Shannon - GlassMistress

"An 18-year-old high school student in New Jersey is going to court to force her parents to pay for her high school and future college education after they cast her out of their home last fall. But her parents say that she's out of luck because she wasn't very respectful of their rules."
- rønin
from Bookmarklet

Once you are 18 your parents don't legally have to take your shit anymore.
- Big Joe Silenced

Not in NJ, apparently. Otherwise they'd have thrown her case out. "Also, just because a child turns 18 does not automatically mean NJ parents can stop financial supporting him/her. A family law attorney, Sheldon Simon, said, 'A child is not emancipated until they’re on their own. Even if a child and the parents don’t get along, that doesn’t relieve the parents of their responsibility.'"
- Victor Ganata

Many states have some protections in place so that children can continue in their parents' home while they finish out high school (without being charged rent, etc.) since it is seen as in their interest (even if they're terrible at enforcing it.) That said, the article is a bit of a mess - the parents are claiming she can come back any time, the beginning sounds like they kicked her out, and she says the school told her not to go back home after claiming abuse.
- Jennifer Dittrich

Laws like that are meant to protect kids from getting thrown out on the street before they have a chance to finish their education. I knew someone in HS whose parents pilfered his savings, and chucked him out of the house on his 18th birthday (in October.) They cancelled his health insurance, and sold most of his stuff. He was lucky to have a place to go, and was eventually emancipated, but it was awful.
- Jennifer Dittrich

I get that kids can be crap, but I've known some pretty shitass parents.
- Jennifer Dittrich

"Before trying to figure out precisely what the Bengali says, I'd like to point out that, in essence, what the English says very politely is "Do not loiter" (not as strong as "No trespassing"). Telling people not to do nothing is not the same as telling them to do something."
- Maitani
from Bookmarklet

"Now, to tackle the Bengali. First of all, I was surprised by the variety of transliterations (not to mention translations) that I received from native Bengali speakers and Indologists. Perhaps this is due to the fact that there is no normative or standard transliteration for Bengali in English (I really don't know if there is or isn't). But I suspect that the differences in some cases...
more...
- Maitani

I guess loitering is frowned upon across the world. "Please conform and be stressed the fuck out like the rest of us."
- Eivind

The standard transliteration of Bengali is the one for Sanskrit, which is occasionally a poor fit. I personally add a dot over the y, to distinguish this letter which sounds like English "y" from the one which sounds like the English "j". The system I use is presented here in Bengali alphabetical order: http://nineislandspress.org/ALifeOf...
- Ruchira S. Datta

Read the post. That repetitive "and stuff" thing is cool, however pherā is not that, it is a verb in itself that means "returning". Literally "ghurāpherā" means "turning and returning."
- Ruchira S. Datta

The formation of the verb ghurāpherā looks particularly interesting to me.
- Maitani

According to Colin Masica (plus my Hindi self-instruction guide) words such as ghurāpherā belong to a category "echo words", a formation that is characteristic for South Asian languages. Usually, a word, most often a noun, is followed by a form which "echoes" it, replacing the initial consonant with a standard consonant, which varies according to the language. E.g., Hindi pānī-vānī...
more...
- Maitani

The meaning of these formations, according to Masica and Bahl, is "the speaker's manifest attitudinal lack of concern or care toward his collocutor or the thing referred to by him", an explanation which is slightly different from that given in the Llog.
- Maitani

Certain parts of East and South London have both Bengali and English writing on street signs/names, station names etc, as Bengali is the most spoken Indian language in London, then Urdu is I'm sure a close second and then Punjabi/Gujarati are likely to be third/forth. Oh, Hindi is most likely up there in second place too.
- Halil

love they way @Ruchira dissects the language likes it a bit of a programming issue :)-
- Peter Dawson

Maitani, you're welcome. Thanks for the additional references from Masica et al. I don't know that it reflects any lack of concern or care towards the collocutor, other than being an informal construction. The attitude towards the thing referred could be translated by adding "or whatever" to the end, e.g., milnā-julnā would be "to mix or associate or whatever". On the other hand, for...
more...
- Ruchira S. Datta

Yowza. *shudder* "Doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital have removed a rare tumor that contained several fully grown teeth from a baby boy's brain. The tumor was found in the then-4-month-old from West Virginia in 2012 after a pediatrician noticed that his head was unusually large for his age. Doctors wrote about the findings in an article that appeared this week in the New England Journal of Medicine. The discovery could someday help researchers trying to cure diseases or grow new organs, medical experts said."
- rønin
from Bookmarklet

Damn. Someone broke into my car between 5 and 7 at work tonight. Smashed the driver side window. Stole some random crazy stuff like headphones and toiletries -- but left my wallet and its cash alone. Uh, what? (EDIT: All fixed now, see http://friendfeed.com/lovefes...)

It could have been so much worse! Why steal my expired Zoo membership cards but leave my wallet behind? They ransacked through the glove compartment and various other compartments, saw the wallet, but didn't take a thing out of it.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

That really sucks. As for the smalltime stuff, I've had that happen to my car before. I think it's homeless folks looking for things they find useful but so small that if they get caught it's clear they weren't after money. The odds are they won't get caught so it's worth taking the risk for them. My car was broken into and a flashlight and travel alarm clock were taken. Nothing else.
- Spidra Webster

Ima: I did report it through our on-site security guards. Police declined to investigate in person.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

Lisa: Good question with no good answer. I normally wouldn't but I didn't need it on me today, so left it there (hidden from view) because I didn't feel like carrying it around.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

Ken: Yeah, boonies by TiVo Central where I normally park. Probably a bit of rain damage -- hard to tell with all the glass everywhere.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

Spidra and Uli: It is so weird. There must be a logic they're following but I cannot fathom it.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

Thanks for the support and kind words, all. I feel fortunate to still have my wallet. The window can be easily replaced and nothing of great value was taken. Just inconvenient. It did make me late for a date, but she was very flexible about changing plans and helping me out. We had a good time.
- Stephen Mack
from iPhone

Just got off the phone with my Farmers agent (my friend Al, a great guy and long-time family friend), who arranged for a glass company to come out today at noon to TiVo to clean out the glass and replace the window. I do have a small deductible, but he arranged a discount, so my out-of-pocket cost will be under $100 to get this taken care of. Could be worse!
- Stephen Mack

Corinne and Spidra: The hard part for me to understand still is when someone causes hundreds of dollars of damage (like when they smashed Spidra's radio) but only pockets items worth $20 or less. I guess that's why New Yorkers in the '80s and '90s would leave their cars unlocked and/or post "no radio in car" signs.
- Stephen Mack

"In 1982 the French international Jean-Pierre Adams went to hospital and was given anaesthetic that should have knocked him out for a few hours. 32 years later, he has yet to awake"
- Iain Baker
from Bookmarklet

Amazing that the hospital cannot contribute more after their malpractice. Elsewhere after a successful lawsuit there would have been funds to cover a professional nurse and care, rather than rely on the wife.
- Nils Sandin

"LOS ANGELES (AP) — The next time you start shaking your finger and shouting "Shame on you!" because your dog chewed up your favorite fuzzy slippers, just remember that no matter how guilty your dog looks, it doesn't know what your rant is about. Behaviorists insist dogs lack shame. The guilty look — head cowered, ears back, eyes droopy — is a reaction to the tantrum you are throwing now over the damage they did hours earlier."
- Morton Fox
from Bookmarklet